Was talking with my brother today and got on the subject of tipping (apparently it was on NPR today). We discussed the lousy experience we sometimes get, and there’s no way to indicate that in any way that anyone will notice. I’d like to suggest restaurants start “line-item tipping”.
When you come to leave a gratuity, you’d be presented with 3 lines:
_______ service
_______ food
_______ cleanliness (or ambiance, or something like that)
This would *easily* allow you to let the entire restaurant know – immediately – whether the food was good, the service was good, and the place was clean. Yeah, those stupid little survey cards are at some places, but I never trust they do anything with them.
If I get lousy food, but the server is still good, I’m tempted to leave the server a bad tip as a way of ‘sending a message’ but ultimately it’s really only hurting the server. Never going back to that restaurant is an option, but likely will hurt everyone.
The line-item gratuity would go a long way towards identifying the good parts of a restaurant on a real-time basis.
What do you think?
So what is a *good* tip for each line-item – it can’t be 20% otherwise that would be a total of 60%
>>> This would *easily* allow……
After a couple of beers I have trouble figuring the tip for the check *total* – now I’d have to get into 10% of 1/3 of the check for service, and 20% of 1/3 of the check for food etc.
7% even across the board if things are OK.
Perhaps a checkbox on the tip line that says “split 3 ways”?
I tip solely based on the wait staff. The restaurant already has my money. I worked as a busboy, barback and waiter during high school and college. One of the restaurants I used to work at tried to take a percentage of the tips stating that the chef (co-owner) was the reason we were getting tips. This was put to a halt as soon as the evening wait staff walked out and refused to come back in until the morning staff got all of their tips. They were already taking a percent of the tips left on credit cards.
I say leave notes on the back of the credit card slip about the restaurant. That is something the wait staff can’t discard and management will see. I have left my email address on there and got a response with a discount on my next meal.